Easton resident tackles the concussion issue head on

Thomas Healy, a graduate of Thayer Academy and currently a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, helped start HeadSmart Labs, a company that will research ways to improve football helmets to limit concussions.

The Thayer Academy graduate and current Carnegie Mellon University graduate student recently helped start HeadSmart Labs, a company that will research ways to improve football helmets to limit concussions.

“Our main focus is on concussion prevention,” said the 22-year-old Healy, who has played football for 16 years. “A lot of labs out there are looking at how do you detect when a player has a concussion, how do you do the rehab after they have a concussion.

“Ours is really how can we create technologies that are going to help prevent the concussions that are happening.”

According to the website of the Pittsburgh-based company, headsmartlabs.com: “HeadSmart Labs is developing a state-of-the-art testing facility to analyze athletic helmets. We strive to better protect athletes and reduce their chances of receiving concussions. While no helmet will eliminate the chance of head and neck injury, additional protective measures can be taken to reduce those chances. Our focus is to improve the way players use current safety equipment as well as to develop new mechanisms that will aid in reducing the impact.’’

Healy, who is a punter on the football team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said that the company is teaming with world renowned concussion doctors in the Pittsburgh area and researchers at Carnegie Mellon.

Even though the research company launched on July 23, Healy’s ideas have already found results.

On the first day of Carnegie Mellon football training camp last year, Healy watched as three teammates went down with concussions. Healy suggested to his coach, Rich Lackner, that the players make sure their helmets were properly inflated.

“If you do inflate these helmets (properly), it would add another layer of protection,” Healy said.

His idea paid dividends as the Tartans went four weeks without a concussion.

“(The idea to start HeadSmart) really started with seeing fellow teammates getting concussions and just how much of a drain it puts on their lives,” said Healy. “It’s weeks of not being at your sort of optimal potential.”

His discovery that inflating helmets properly could help limit concussions also led to some troubling information – over 90 percent of high school football players were using helmets that were not properly inflated.

“A properly inflated helmet can perform upward of 15 to 20 percent better than a non-inflated helmet, in terms of absorbing the impacts and reducing the acceleration of the head,” said Healy.

Healy said HeadSmart Labs is looking at a few things, one of the major ones being looked at is how helmets are tested. HeadSmart Labs will use ‘two-body testing,’ which Healy said was unique to the company.

Page 2 of 2 - “Kind of envision putting two car crash dummies and putting them on a sliding rail that you can adjust the figures to collide in different angles,” described Healy. “It will give us a better representation of what the impacts are that players are actually receiving in game.”

HeadSmart will currently focus on football helmets, but plans to look at other sports that have helmets, such as lacrosse and hockey.

Along with testing helmets differently, HeadSmart labs will also look at how long helmet shells last before they no longer offer protection and which hits are likely to cause concussions.

Healy, who played offensive and defensive line at Thayer, said he’s never been diagnosed with a concussion.

“But that doesn’t mean I’ve never received a concussion before,” added Healy, who resides in Easton with his parents. Brian and Kathy. “I know there’s been plays (I’ve gotten) up and your bell is rung.

“From today’s standards, I would probably say that that was a concussion, but back when I didn’t really know much, I just thought, ‘OK, just keep playing, I’m fine.’”

Healy said he’s noticed that the idea of playing through a concussion is starting to go by the way-side. Players are starting to see the dangers of playing through a concussion with a higher risk of getting a second concussion, which has even more damaging effects.

“If you can detect a concussion when it first happens and not have multiple impacts and get another concussion,” said Healy, “the time out that the player would (miss) is a lot less than if you get that second impact.”

A stat from ESPN, which was included in the HeadSmart Labs launch press release, says that participation of youth in Pop Warner football dropped by 9.5 percent between 2010 and 2011. That press release also included a stat stating that 3.8 million concussions occurred from participation in sports, according to The American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

Healy hopes that the company’s research can bring the participation numbers up and the concussion numbers down.

“I have a lot of love for playing football,” said Healy. “I couldn’t imagine my life without it.

“I think there are so many benefits to the sport, that it overcomes a lot of the negative and I think it is getting safer.”

“In five, 10, 15 years from now, I think we’re going to see that concussion rates are dropping and that players are taking the appropriate measures that are going to lead them to not having these long-lasting brain injuries.”